Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 74875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
I didn’t know the man. In fact, I’d never seen him before in my life.
But I could tell with just one glance what kind of man he was.
One that her father would approve of.
“You want anything else to drink?”
The same server that I’d repossessed the car from served us, and I could tell within seconds that Baylor was nervous as hell.
He kept watching her like she was about to burst into tears at any moment, and if Hennessy hadn’t been sitting two tables over with her date, I would’ve found it humorous.
However, I couldn’t find anything humorous when I knew the moment they walked in that this date had the recipe for disaster in the making.
“I’d love another beer,” Baylor muttered to his nearly empty mug. “Thanks.”
His muttered reply had me smiling, despite wanting to lean over the empty table in between Hennessy and I and pull her into my lap.
“You’re being transparent,” I said the minute she left. “You got it bad for the girl?”
Baylor raised his lip in a silent snarl. “Go fuck yourself right off a fuckin’ cliff.”
“Inventive.” I chuckled.
“Fuck you.”
I rolled my eyes, and they landed on Hennessy.
She was staring at me, but the moment our eyes met, she quickly looked away.
“Speaking of being transparent,” Baylor drawled. “You couldn’t have it any worse right now.”
I flipped him off and picked up my drink, putting it to my lips, and taking a healthy sip before replying, “I probably could,” I admitted. “But I won’t.”
“Sure, you won’t,” he countered. “Just like I don’t have it bad for a girl that has trouble written all over her.”
That was the truth. We were both screwed.
“Here you go,” the waitress said. “Anything else?”
I shook my head, and she left as if being there any longer would cause her to say something she might regret.
It made me want to laugh. Especially when I saw the anger written all over Baylor’s face.
“How’s your house coming?”
I shrugged. “Can’t get much done at night anymore.”
“Why?”
My eyes slid over to the woman.
“She came over last night, well this morning, and complained about the noise. Since I don’t get off until sometime after eight most nights, I don’t have very much time to work on it.”
He grunted in understanding.
“Get up early.”
I thought about that for a moment, and immediately discarded that idea.
“Got enough of that in prison,” I admitted. “The idea of getting up earlier than eight o’clock literally makes me want to puke up these awesome tacos.”
Baylor snorted. “You’re so full of shit.”
I was.
I wasn’t going to throw up, but I damn sure wasn’t going to entertain the thought of getting up early. Staying up late was easy. Getting up earlier than eight, to be into work by eight thirty, wasn’t something I was willing to consider.
“Do you like to eat tacos?”
I looked over at hearing Hennessy’s date ask her that, and got to watch her stuff half of her taco into her mouth.
“Yes,” she said through a mouthful of food.
“I could take them or leave them,” her new friend admitted. “I’m more into refined food. Food you have to eat with a fork and a knife.”
“Like steak?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Negative.”
Her brows went up.
“You don’t like steak?”
He shook his head again. “I’m a vegan.”
Hennessy’s eyebrows furrowed.
“Would you like any more?” the waitress asked.
“Yes,” Hennessy whispered. “Thank you, Lark.”
So that was the girl’s name.
My eyes went to Baylor to see his eyes fixated on the waitress’s backside. He’d also taken notice of her name, because his eyebrows went up.
“I’d like some, too,” Hennessy’s date smiled at the server. “Like hers, only vegan, please.”
Could vegans eat cheese?
I pulled out my phone and Googled: what do vegans eat?
The first thing that popped up was ‘a type of vegetarianism that excludes meat and all animal products.’
My immediate thought was ‘what a miserable existence.’
My second was that Hennessy’s date had no fucking clue what was going on.
I’d witnessed him eat not one, not two, but four tacos. Each of those tacos had cheese on it. Cheese was a byproduct of milk, which was derived from a cow.
Did he know what being a vegan entailed, or was he just playing her?
My curiosity was caught, and seeing as Baylor was looking behind my head at the mirror that I knew to be there, which had a prime view of the woman he’d been staring at for the majority of the night when she wasn’t looking, I didn’t feel bad.
Instead, I turned my eyes to the two people at the next table over, and studied them.
***
Hennessy
This was a disaster.
I couldn’t focus on the man in front of me, because of the man beside me.
I was so hyper aware of everything the man did, that I wasn’t giving the man next to me the attention he apparently needed.
Which was, I realized, a lot.